Immortality (22 page)

She was disturbed realizing she hadn’t registered seeing all the bodies until now. Subconsciously, she must have been absorbing everything. What kind of imagined dangers were being conjured inside her as a result? She put the gun away and forced herself to walk normally without looking back. By the end of the block, the sounds of the night had returned.

Three blocks to go until home, Sarah told herself. The street lights flickered on, then went dark. They had been doing that for the last half hour. The power came again, and this time with force. Houses lit up. There was a faint sound of music. The streets were flooded with light. Sarah looked about her. She decided it was better in the dark. The lights only added a carnival atmosphere to the dead.

Sarah walked up the outside flight of steps leading to her door. The wooden slats creaked as they always had. They were weather-worn and in need of paint. The entrance to her apartment was in back. The only entrances on the ground floor were for the Acropolis diner.

Halfway up, Sarah stopped climbing. The inside wooden door was open. The outer screen door was destroyed. A strip of screening was dangling over the edge of the landing. The house lights appeared to be out. Sarah’s chest was filled with dread. A tiny rivulet of sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. She tried to call Kenny’s name, but only managed a croak. She tried again.

“Kenny!”

There was no answer. Kenny might have been out somewhere but Ralph should have been here. He should have heard her coming up the steps and been waiting at the door. Sarah drew her gun. She reached inside the door and flipped on the house lights, then walked in, keeping her back always to a wall. The living room was empty. She edged into the bedroom... empty. She checked the closets. She checked the bathroom. She checked the hall. The apartment was deserted.

Sarah thought about the Stephanopolis brothers downstairs. Maybe Kenny was in the diner. She ran and half-stumbled down the steps, around to the front of the building, and in the door to the diner.

She was panting as the plate-glass door closed behind her. The air reeked with burnt food and smoke. Patrons were spilled over the tables and the floor. One of the Stephanopolis brothers was sitting with his back against a wall. Sarah looked away. She didn’t see Kenny anywhere in the room.

There was a sizzling noise coming from the back. Sarah went to investigate. She was praying that she wouldn’t find what she suspected was there. She walked through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The second Stephanopolis brother lay face down on a gas grill. There was a stench of something burnt. Her stomach contracted. She knew she had to get him off the grill and shut it down before the place caught fire. She closed her eyes, opening them only long enough to grab him by the belt. She pulled hard, yanking him to the floor. Her injured ribs knifed her with pain. Without looking at the corpse, she found the gas knobs and shut the grill down.

Sarah walked out into the front of the diner, and threw up for the second time this night. There was nothing left in her stomach. She glanced around into the faces of corpses. She retreated to her apartment, locked the door, and pushed an oak bookcase up against it.

Sarah struggled out of her clothing, her gun belt, her uniform, her vest. She walked into the shower and turned on the tap. Water spewed into her face. Her body shivered violently in the cold deluge that slowly grew hot. Steaming water poured through clumps of her hair and trickled down along her chest. The despair felt like it was frozen so deeply inside her that nothing could ever thaw it. In time the water began to cool. She adjusted the taps to get the last moments of warmth. She looked down to examine her left side. There was a welt surrounded by a bruised area larger than her outstretched fingers could cover.

Sarah sat down at the kitchen table. She pulled her bathrobe tightly around her shoulders. Her uniform was piled on one of the chairs with the gun belt hung over the back. She stared at a salt and pepper shaker set, a porcelain boy and girl holding hands. Her eyes moved to a dent in the wooden tabletop; her fingers lightly touched the spot. Sarah had scoured secondhand furniture stores for months until she had found this solid oak table. It was the prize of her small furniture collection. Kenny had looked sheepish as if the dent had been completely his fault. She remembered the day it had happened. Kenny had been carrying in a bag of groceries. The bottom had ripped open. Cans of Progresso Soup had tumbled out, minestrone. He had tried to fix the top, but had only made it worse. He’d felt so guilty that it had taken her all week to convince him that she didn’t care.

Tears ran down Sarah’s cheeks. She knew Kenny was gone. She knew it by the hollow feeling in her chest. The place where she’d always felt his love was now empty. The ceiling light was blurred into shimmers from her tears. She pulled the gun belt off the chair. The Beretta’s clip was loaded with hollow points. She clicked off the safety. The tiny sound made her heart jump. She turned the barrel toward her eye and stared down it. She could see the bullet’s copper jacket inside the gunmetal bore. She hooked a thumb inside the trigger guard. On the wall next to the refrigerator was a framed picture of her and Kenny. He had his arm around her. They were both smiling, both knowing that their love would last. She stared at that picture while her thumb squeezed down on the trigger. She could feel it approaching the point where the hammer would drop free, the moment that oblivion would take her. The gun was an unfocused blur in her vision. With all her strength she kept her eyes on the image of her and Kenny, and squeezed farther on the trigger. Her arms were trembling. She was holding her breath. Applying that last ounce of pressure was as hard as lifting a car off the ground. She wanted the nightmare to end.

She exhaled abruptly. She couldn’t do it. She set the gun down onto the table next to the dents that Kenny had made.

The kitchen window was open just a few inches. The air had a faint acrid taste. Sarah stared at nothing until the pangs of hunger finally moved her. She went to the refrigerator for a glass of milk. She drank it in greedy gulps and then looked at the clock. A rustling sound came from outside.
Just the wind
, she thought, and filled the glass again. A branch snapped.

Sarah got up. She tried to see out the window but couldn’t get a good view. She went to the backdoor, pulled away the bookcase, and opened the door part way. She still couldn’t see anything. There were no lights out back. The trees at the edge of the parking lot were like a wall of fuzzy blackness. She stepped out onto the porch and waited for her eyes to adjust. She checked the shadows by the cars and the garbage bins. She didn’t recognize any of the cars; they must have belonged to the diner’s customers. Sarah went down a few steps. There was a sound of bushes rustling. She froze. Her heart beat faster. Something was definitely in the woods.

A dark shape ambled out from the trees. Sarah stifled a scream. The shape was coming straight at her. She tripped over something that snagged her ankle. She scrambled up the steps on all fours. Just as her fingers reached an edge of the open door, she heard the creek of something mounting the steps behind her. She wheeled round to kick at it. She was weakened from all the trauma and knew there wasn’t much fight left in her. Why had she left her gun inside?

The shape was coming low to the ground. It was an animal. The shape’s eyes seemed to glow. Halfway up the steps it moved into a pool of light. Sarah blinked. It was Ralph. The world jumped back into motion. She was too drained to call his name. Briars were stuck to his fur and a length of rope trailed behind him. She could only guess what he’d been through and wondered who would have tried to tie him up. The only answer that made sense was Kenny. Ralph hesitantly climbed the stairs. He sniffed her and then splashed her face with his tongue. She violently hugged him. She could feel the strength in his muscled neck. He raised his head a few inches, lifting her entire weight up with his movement. Sarah was crying and couldn’t stop. She wasn’t alone anymore.

“Ralph, don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Sarah thought about the broken screen door. The damage had to have been from Ralph getting out.

“I don’t want you ever leaving home without me.”

Ralph whined something and then licked her as if he understood he was being scolded. Sarah hugged him with every ounce of strength she had left. He was such a powerful animal that it was impossible for her to hurt him.

Sarah got Ralph a bowl of water and half a can of food. They had to conserve. No telling what the supermarkets were like. She went into the living room and tried the phone again. She pressed the first digit of her parent’s number. Unlike before, this time the dial tone went away. She punched in the remaining numbers. She heard the clicking sounds of a connection being made. A rapid busy signal cut in. Sarah knew from her police training it was called an intercept-tone. Hearing it meant the system was working but the circuits were overloaded with calls. She glanced at the clock and decided to try again in a half hour. She looked at the television. The set was old and didn’t receive all the channels. The screen was filled with a civil defense pattern. A message scrolled at the bottom of the screen advising her to stay tuned for specific instructions.

Sarah woke without remembering when she’d dozed off. She was in the living room with the Beretta in her lap. She heard the approaching wail of a motorcycle coming down her street. She got to the window in time to see the red glow of taillight wash fading on the trees at the end of the block. Had it been real or was it just a ghost rider of her mind?

Sarah went back to the couch. Ralph was curled into a ball at one end. Her throat was dry. She took a sip of bottled water. As she nestled back into the cushions, her eyes opened wide. The civil defense pattern was gone from the television. She recognized the face of someone from a New York news channel. A gas mask hung loose from the reporter’s neck. He was inside some kind of military vehicle. The transmission kept cutting out and then returning. There was a window in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The window contained a shaky view of what must have been a night vision gun sight on the vehicle. A set of cross hairs bisected the image. A Burger King sign passed across the view, followed by more buildings and cars. The main image zoomed in on the reporter who was saying something. Sarah turned up the volume.

“
....The areas of central and northern New Jersey have been placed under martial law by order of Governor Fairchild. The National Guard has been mobilized along with the Red Cross. I have witnessed unimaginable things, bodies lying in the streets, in cars, inside stores. Few of the reports coming in can be confirmed. What I can tell you at this point is that a catastrophe of major proportions has struck New Jersey. No one in authority is stating that they can categorically rule out some kind of biological attack. The dead are numbered in the tens of thousands. The cause is still unknown at this time. The Governor’s office has issued a statement indicating that some type of....”

The transmission went to static for almost a full minute, then,

“
....All I can tell you is the Army Support group that I am with is very nervous. The vehicle I’m riding in is airtight and hardened for chemical warfare, but I still don’t feel safe. I can only imagine what it’s like outside. For the millions of people in the affected areas the only advice the authorities are offering is, ‘Stay home with the windows closed....’”

Sarah heard herself laugh. She raised her warm bottle of water in a toast to the screen. The advice was idiotic, she thought. The minions of hell are marching on your homes. Shut the windows and bolt the doors; and while you’re at it, boil some water. Do something, anything to take your mind off the fact that you’re dead. You may be breathing now, but you’re as good as dead!

~

Sarah opened her eyes. Outside her windows was darkness. She was shivering. The clothing she’d fallen asleep in was soaked against her skin. The night chills were back. She remembered her dreams and wished she’d forgotten them. They were vivid and real. She’d dreamt she was asleep on the couch with a dousing rod in her hands. The rod pulled as if it were seeking water. She opened her eyes and saw Kenny leering at her. She knew he was dead. His skin was like wax. His eyes were solid black marbles. There was no hint of expression on his face. Standing with him were her parents and her brother Tim. They were all dead like Kenny – waxy skin and black marble eyes. Brackish pond water was dripping from their hair and clothing, forming puddles on the carpeted floor.

Sarah tried to push the dream from her mind. She turned on all the lights and pulled Ralph into her lap. She stared at the floor where they’d stood – night chills were shaking her body. Something deep inside her believed the dream was real. She got up and touched the carpeting to see if it was damp.

Artie was looking out the window of his apartment. Orange flames were reflected in the glass. Far below him, a car was burning in the center of the street. No one had come to put the fire out. A teenager had wandered by a few minutes earlier and stopped. The youth had dropped his pants and emptied his bladder into the flames.

Feeling exposed, Artie moved back from the windows. He imagined some crazy with a rifle sitting on top of a building just waiting for easy targets. As the reports of looting and fires had increased to citywide, Artie had found himself staring at the front door and the additional deadbolt he had installed after they signed the lease. At the time it had seemed like overkill; now he wished he had installed far more.

The television was glowing with aerial photos of the MetLife building covered in flames. The devastation looked like the terrorist attacks all over again. Artie took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. The air was laced with an acrid smoke. Each breath left a taste in his mouth. The fire department was taxed to its limits. The city was in a stranglehold. The news reports reminded him of a documentary Suzy had done on Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots. In Los Angeles, gangbangers and local kids – and even adults – had gone wild on the day of the Rodney King verdict. Suzy had footage of them dragging innocent people from cars and fatally beating them. Tonight, the mob’s only excuse was the smell of death from across the Hudson River. With all this city had been through at the hands of terrorists, with all the hope for mending racial and class divisions, it seemed nothing really deep in the bones of this city had actually healed. There had been an old wound waiting to open and now its festering had been revealed.